Harold Wolman

Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept

Abstract The literature on urban sprawl confuses causes, consequences, and conditions. This article presents a conceptual definition of sprawl based on eight distinct dimensions of land use patterns: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity mixed uses, and proximity. Sprawl is defined as a condition of land use that is represented by low values on one or more of these dimensions. Each dimension is operationally defined and tested in 13 urbanized areas. Results for six dimensions are reported for each area, and an initial comparison of the extent of sprawl in the 13 areas is provided. The test confirms the utility of the approach and suggests that a clearer conceptual and operational definition can facilitate research on the causes and consequences of sprawl.

The Politics of Local Economic Development

This article, written in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Economic Development Quarterly, reviews the literature on the politics of local economic development. It asks what is known-and not known-about this topic. The article summarizes, assesses, and critiques the literature; indicates its shortcomings; and suggests paths for future research. It examines what the literature says about the forces driving local governments to engage in economic development activity, the factors that account for variation in such activity, the way local officials think about economic development-including its political logic-and the political activity that characterizes local economic development policy. With respect to the local politics of economic development, the article focuses on the interests involved and particularly on the question of how dominant business is in the process, the nature and degree of conflict, and the openness of local economic development decision making to public participation.

Policy Transfer among Local Governments: An Information–Theory Approach

We argue that the burgeoning literature on policy transfer suffers from the lack of an analytical framework that would facilitate understanding and, thus, theory–building. We suggest that policy transfer be conceptualized as occurring through a communications and information framework and that it focus on information networks that include producers, senders, and facilitators of information, as well as recipients. We apply this framework to an illustrative study of how British local–authority officials involved in the area of urban regeneration policy learn from each other’s experience. Utilizing this approach, the results of our case study yield several testable hypotheses for future study. In particular, they direct us towards the importance of informal networks in the policy–transfer process, towards an examination of the motivations of producers, senders, and disseminators of information, and towards the difficulty all participants in the network have in assessing the quality and validity of the information they receive.

The Fundamental Challenge in Measuring Sprawl: Which Land Should Be Considered?

Abstract Lack of agreement on how to define and measure sprawl has hampered development of policy related to its causes and consequences. We question previous work for two reasons: the use of study areas that overbound or underbound sprawl landscapes, and the failure to account for land unavailable for development. We formulate “extended urban areas,” based on housing density and commuting patterns and argue that they represent a preferable geographic basis for measuring sprawl. We operationalize with satellite imagery a way for measuring land unavailable for development in these areas. We then compute five measures of urban development using the National Land Cover Data Base and decennial census data to assess the extent of sprawl in the extended urban areas of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington. Our sensitivity analyses reveal that the measurement of sprawl critically depends on which land area forms the basis of the analysis, and, to a lesser degree, how one accounts for land unavailable for development. *This research was funded in part by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) under Cooperative Agreement No. 01CRAG0009, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this report are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USGS or the organizations for whom they work. The authors gratefully acknowledge the efforts of Doug Towns and Jackie Cutsinger of Wayne States Center for Urban Studies for their GIS and programming assistance. Anonymous referees provided helpful suggestions on an earlier draft.

Verifying the Multi‐Dimensional Nature of Metropolitan Land Use: Advancing the Understanding and Measurement of Sprawl

ABSTRACT: Twelve conceptually distinct dimensions of land use patterns are operationalized for 50 large US metropolitan areas using a battery of indices. Common patterns of variation in these indices across metropolitan areas are discerned using correlation and factor analyses. We find that: (1) seven principal components best summarize the dimensions of housing and employment land uses, (2) metro areas often exhibit both high and low levels of sprawl-like patterns across the seven components, and (3) housing and employment aspects of sprawl-like patterns differ in nature. Thus, land use patterns prove multi-dimensional in both theory and practice. Exploratory analyses indicate: (1) little regional variation in land use patterns, (2) metro areas with larger populations are more dense/continuous with greater housing centrality and concentration of employment in the core, (3) older areas have higher degrees of housing concentration and employment in the core, (4) constrained areas evince greater density/continuity, and (5) inter-metropolitan variations in several dimensions of land use patterns are not well explained by population, age, growth patterns, or topographical constraints on development. Results imply that policymakers must carefully unravel which land use dimension is causing undesirable outcomes, and then devise precise policy instruments to change only this dimension.

Can Suburbs Survive without their Central Cities? Examining the Suburban Dependence Hypothesis

Based on recent findings that changes in average suburban incomes are positively associated with changes in average central-city incomes, some have concluded that disparities between central cities and their suburbs cause decline in metropolitan economic growth. The authors argue that causality runs in the other direction—metropolitan-wide growth narrows disparities. The authors argue that cities and suburbs are interdependent, that there can be healthy individual suburbs and weak central cities, and that there can be healthy suburbs in the aggregate and extremely poor central cities.

What is a Central City in the United States? Applying a Statistical Technique for Developing Taxonomies

We test the null hypothesis that municipalities defined as central cities by the US Bureau of the Census in 1990 are homogeneous-a hypothesis we reject. Rather, we find that US central cities consist of 2 distinct subsets of municipalities that are aggregated from 13 cluster groupings. The article has two purposes. The first is methodological. We develop a method that uses cluster analysis to group US central cities; then we employ discriminant analysis to establish the statistical validity of those groups. We also develop techniques to minimise the role of judgement in selecting the appropriate cluster solution. The second purpose of the article is to test the substantive null hypothesis. Our rejection of the homogeneity assumption raises the spectre of specification error in research and public policies that assume homogeneity among central cities.

Testing the Conventional Wisdom about Land Use and Traffic Congestion: The More We Sprawl, the Less We Move?

The paper explores relationships between seven dimensions of land use in 1990 and subsequent levels of three traffic congestion outcomes in 2000 for a sample of 50 large US urban areas. Multiple regression models are developed to address several methodological concerns, including reverse causation and time-lags. Controlling for prior levels of congestion and changes in an urban areas transport network and relevant demographics, it is found that: density/ continuity is positively related to subsequent roadway ADT/lane and delay per capita; housing centrality is positively related to subsequent delay per capita; and housing-job proximity is inversely related to subsequent commute time. Only the last result corresponds to the conventional wisdom that more compact metropolitan land use patterns reduce traffic congestion. These results prove two points: that the choice of congestion measure may substantively affect the results; and that multivariate statistical analyses are necessary to control for potentially confounding influences, such as population growth and investment in the transport network.

The Calculus of Coalitions Cities, Suburbs, and the Metropolitan Agenda

Reductions in federal urban assistance and devolution have made cities increasingly reliant on their state governments at a time when cities have lost political strength in state legislatures. This article identifies three types of coalitions that historically supported cities: party-imposed coalitions, interest-based coalitions, and governor-brokered coalitions. It shows how institutional, demographic, and economic changes have made these legislative coalitions less reliable. The article then considers prospects for constructing new city-suburban legislative coalitions. It argues that institutional constraints have limited the scope of preferences expressed by city and suburban legislators. The article concludes that prospects for city-suburban coalitions will depend on new issue definitions, institutional rules, and organizations that help city and suburban legislators redefine their policy preferences.

The Determinants of Program Success and Failure

Recent social science research – particularly evaluation research and cost-benefit analysis – has produced a substantial and very useful literature on the impact of public policy and on the relationship of program inputs to outputs and outcomes. However, the explicit focus of these analytic techniques on impacts and outcomes does not systematically yield useful information on why programs have been successes or failures. Policy-makers faced with an evaluation of program success or failure obviously need to know something about the why question if they are to make needed adjustments in the program or carry the lessons of one program to other areas. This article attempts to present a comprehensive framework for explaining and understanding program performance. It is meant to have two uses and to serve two clienteles. First, it presents for social scientists a set of research questions to guide research into the determinants of program performance. Second, it provides public policy-makers with a set of action questions which should be asked and answered appropriately in the actual formulating and carrying out of public policy, as a means of enhancing the chances of program success. The framework is divided into two parts, the formulating process and the carrying out process, although these two processes may overlap considerably, both in time and in terms of substantive concerns. Program success may be impeded by problems or inadequacies in one or more of the components in either the formulating stage or the carrying out stage or in both.